MWC 14 Day 2: Blackberry Z3 and Q20 Smartphones

After the recent announcement by Blackberry and Nokia this week announcing BBM for Windows Phone, Blackberry today had a duo of new Blackberry 10 devices to show off, well atleast the Z3 was shown off, the Q20 was just shown on a display.

Blackberry Z3

Since Blackberry announced that Foxconn would mass-produce, if they sell that much, this is the first result of that, and the first device for quite some time from Blackberry, the Z3. Other than the fact the Z3 will sell for $200, the Z3’s main problem is it really doesn’t stand out from the crowd, we mentioned this when the Z30 was announced with more or less Z10 specs, which brings up another problem for Blackberry, carrier support. The Blackberry Z30, if you remember, was even rejected by the biggest Canadian Carrier, Rogers, which when you remember the fact Blackberry IS Canadian, it’s definitely not a good sign when even your home is rejecting your device.

The display on the Z3 will be a 5 inch display supporting a rather low resolution of 960 x 540, which is pretty low when compared to the 720p display announced on their Z10 last year. The Camera will be odd too at 5.5MP, with a 1.1MP front facer. The device will not be LTE, which is a surprise, but John Chen said something rather comical on the matter “a plan to take that phone out globally with LTE sometime in the future before I die”, so unless John Chen has a dying wish, we expect LTE support to be announced later.

Performance wise we’ve yet to see what both the Z3 and Q20 are powered by we expect an S4 Pro. Interestingly, this is the first Blackberry 10 device to have it’s microUSB port on the bottom, and the volume and power buttons are on the left side, aside to the usual right location.

Blackberry Q20

WE WILL UPDATE THIS POST WITH AN IMAGE ONCE WE'VE ONCE AVAILABLE

The first thing you’ll notice instantly about the Blackberry Q20 is the return of some Blackberry 7 friends, this is likely due to the fact that Blackberry even today is selling more BB7 devices than BB10 devices …. we don’t know why either. The Blackberry Q20 is the QWERTY announcement from today, and to entice BB7 users to upgrade to the Q20, they’ve incorporated the return of the integrated Trackpad, as well as the “Menu”, “Back”, “Send” and “End” buttons.

Blackberry were also very keen to mention that their keyboards are patented, likely an attack on the iPhone keyboard accessory released thanks to a certain American Idol host.

The Q20 will have a 3.5 inch touchscreen, a slightly larger size as the Q10 and the largest on any Blackberry QWERTY, and of course will come with Blackberry 10.2.1, Blackberry have also promoted the Q20 as having a very big battery, so expect much better battery life than the Q10.

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What these mean for Blackberry moving forward is yet to be seen, the device neither blow us away or blow away anyone else, but they are low cost Blackberry 10 devices that Blackberry are hoping consumers atleast consider over the growing pressure from iOS, Android and now Windows Phone.

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